Black & White – Melbourne CBD
Overnight, we finally came to the end of Melbourne’s longest heat wave on record, with the daytime temperatures over 32 degrees (over 90F) for 9 consecutive days in a row (and the night-time temperatures not much better).
By yesterday morning, I’d more than had enough. My normally cool flat had warmed up to the point where I was literally sitting 2-3 feet away from my floor fan with a never-ending carafe of chilled water on my desk and a bare minimum of clothes. The only reason I had any clothes on at all was because neighbours can see through the curtains when walking down my side path.
Night time was the worst, as my bedroom has no shady trees overlooking it during the daytime, so it was stifling by the time I went to bed.
My neighbour had taken me shopping last Thursday, but I’d nearly passed out and had to keep stopping for ‘rest’ stops from the car park to the air-conditioned fresh food market. Melbourne’s hot summer is not for the elderly, babies……… and little ‘ol me. The last time it was this unbearably hot was in 2009 when it got to 46C (115F) in Melbourne and every single leaf in my garden roasted a golden brown (literally). It took about 2 years for most residential & public gardens to recover from that summer. But at least that heat wave only lasted a few days.
MY daily LIFE & photography excursions continue TO REVOLVE AROUND THE WEATHER………….. LITERALLY!
In desperation yesterday, (as I was fed up with being housebound), I caught an air-conditioned bus to an air-conditioned tram to the air-conditioned city. (Except that I walked from the top of the city down to the main shopping area through the shaded lanes & arcades, so the walk warmed me up considerably).
I had decided to put my 50mm lens on my camera and shoot in monochrome for the whole afternoon (as a challenge). Normally I have my 18-200mm lens on the camera most of the afternoon and shoot in colour (with the occasional image turned into Black & White in editing).
I have to tell you it was not easy. I decided the first Chinatown image (above), had too much grey. I didn’t mind the over-exposed background. I have never had the DSLR on Monochrome for most of the afternoon before. But having a love of Black & White photo images, I decided that 2013 was going to be a year of challenging myself to ‘think outside the box’ and try a few different camera settings – Black & White being one of them. My New Year’s resolution took a couple of months to kick in though.
I found it a little hard to determine which scenes had sufficient contrast to make good Black & White images and which scenes had too much bright sunlight & deep dark shade (which would be impossible to get the exposure correct – unless they were heavily Photoshopped). I’m not a fan of a lot of post processing, but to be honest, I don’t have the interest in spending hours poring over a computer screen with Photoshop or Lightroom. I spent over 30 years in an office environment working with computers and I sure don’t want to do it in ‘retirement
It took me a whole walk through Chinatown practising, before I came up with some images that sort of looked OK on the LCD screen. Because I shoot with my thick distance spectacles on, it’s almost impossible for me to review images at the time of shooting. The only way I can get reasonably good shots is to take many photos of each subject and hope that I get a few ‘keepers’ out of the series. After nearly 3 years of photography, I get quite a few keepers on my photography excursions these days. I admit that most of my Black & White shots taken yesterday needed the light and contrast ‘tweaked’ in the iPhoto editing section on the Mac Pro. I don’t mind a little ‘tweaking’ …….as long as it doesn’t take too long, that is. I’ve decided not to use Photoshop Elements any more. I’m going to concentrate on trying to improve my ‘in camera‘ photography. That was my second New Year’s Resolution.
Chinatown has a little Street Art too – not like the hidden lane ways near the southern end of the city’s CBD, but certainly Street Art (as opposed to graffiti). Bit harder to shoot with the 50mm lens and the DSLR set on ‘Monochrome’ though. I had to keep crossing the street and moving around trying to re-compose. My telephoto lens is still my favourite lens. And I think it will take quite a lot of practice to shoot in Monochrome. Maybe it will be easier in Autumn and/or Spring with the light being a little softer.
But then, that’s what makes a good photo – practice, practice & more practice. Learning to ‘see’. Learning to capture the Light (or lack thereof).
Sometimes I get it right, sometimes not. Actually I don’t mind the over-exposed section of the photo below. I ended up increasing the ‘highlights’ slider as far as it would go (to get that faint building outline at the end of the over-exposed lane way. I suppose I could have taken 3 images, one under-exposed, one over-exposed and one somewhere in between and over-laid them in Photoshop, but I’ve never actually done that before. The truth is that I’m lazy when it comes to photo editing. As I’ve said before, (more than once), I don’t want to be a Photo Editor, I want to be a Photographer.
I even like the image below (despite it being out of focus) – there’s a timeless feeling about the photo. If there hadn’t been a couple of cars partly visible at the end of the lane, it could have been shot 50 years ago in one of Chinatown’s lanes. Maybe it would have lost that timeless quality if the focus had been sharp? I think in this case, the faint blur adds to the composition. With the tree hiding some of the modern office building in the background, there is a hint of a country lane atmosphere coming through.
Not so, the photo appearing after it though – no mistaking the city with that image. Actually, on reflection, I think I over-sharpened the focus in editing, but I’m not changing it now it’s in this post.
Yesterday, I only reverted to colour when I walked down Hosier Lane towards the end of the afternoon, renown as one of Melbourne’s greatest lane ways of Street Art (and yes, on this occasion, I did ask this man if he would mind me taking his photo – he thought I was a tourist – and said OK). The street art has been overlaid with graffiti in this image.
Then I stopped in at St Paul’s Cathedral where an assistant refilled my water bottle for the trip home (and I took a lot of lousy photos with the 50mm lens which I deleted as soon as I reviewed them on the computer). I must have been wobbling with heat fatigue. The Cathedral ‘volunteer’ manning the information desk, brought a fan to cool me down and bade me sit for a while to recover.
Well, ok, I’ll give you an example of ‘heat fatigue‘ – LOL. I’m going to keep this shot so I’ve got a good example of how NOT to take a photo (Big Grin).
Then out the door for the short walk to the tram stop. I took a few shots of seagulls resting on a lawn area of the main city square as I waited to catch a tram (& then bus) home.
It’s sunny outside today and I’m going for a walk as the wind is relatively cool and gusty – too gusty for photos, but I daren’t leave the DSLR at home – that’s a sure way to miss a photo opportunity.
Wonderful, interesting shots. Our heat is over now too and it seems freezing!
Oh my goodness, Julie, I’m so glad your heat is over in the West of Aust. Hasn’t it been awful.
I’ll take freezing any day.
Oh, Victoria . . . quite a day, for sure. Please reconsider your resolution not to use Photoshop Elements for after-capture development. I most strongly urge you to consider bracketing your exposures to give you more date to work with, so that you can bring out all of the elements that you had in mind when you decided to make a particular shot. So much can be done to make use of the raw data that one can capture in the initial image, especially under difficult lighting conditions, that enhance our ability to develop them into what we envisioned when we saw the scene. Just think about it, and don’t limit the creative tools in your palette.
Thanks for the advice Gary. I usually don’t keep grossly over, or under, exposed shots (like I took yesterday). Yesterday was very much a learning curve with the 50mm prime lens and shooting in Monochrome in the city. I think I need a lot more practice.
I uploaded PSE9 onto my new Mac Pro when I bought the little laptop last October. I couldn’t get the Dell 27″ monitor I use for photo reviewing & editing callibrated to sinc in with the new little Mac (& then discovered the ppi difference was the reason, quite late in the year). After all the computer troubles and the final death of my old windows desktop, I have to admit everything computer related seems all too hard & tedious.
I couldn’t seem to save PSE9 edited shots on the new Mac last year either, and with all this ghastly heat in Melbourne have not had the energy to even try again.
The free tutorial I attended in Jan ? 2013 demonstrated how to take 3 differently exposed photos and combine them together to achieve good exposure in difficult light conditions (amongst other things), but I have to admit I’ve never got past the most basic ‘guided’ editing on PSE9. I’m pretty much ‘technology challenged’ at the best of times.
I’ll give your advice some more thought when life gets back to normal on the cool Autumn days. There never seems to be enough time in the day within my energy capsule & cognitive function to do too much on the computer though.
I so sympathise with you over the extremely hot summer you’ve had. It has been in the 30s a few times in CHCH and that’s a few times too many for me too.
Great photos as usual. I have come to LOVE B&W too. Look forward to your next post.
Thanks Carolyn. I know New Zealand is much cooler than here. Maybe I need to move to NZ or even to Tasmania might be better (although they’ve had those terrible bush fires this summer).
I keep forgetting to ask – do you have a Photo Blog? I’d love to see some of your photos.
Next post might be from after next Sunday which is the annual Thai Food & Culture festival I think. So it might be 10-14 days before the next attempt at B & W.
Great post and some great images. Bright sunshine, with plenty of contrast between shadows and highlights, can be perfect for converting to mono. Your shots work very well.
Thanks for the comment Mark. I really would like to try more B & W. I took about 30 B & W shots in Chinatown before I started to get some good contrast.
Black & White is not as easy as one thinks, especially as I’ve only taken ‘happy snaps’ in the 1970s while on holiday. I’ve never seriously looked at Photography as a creative art form.
I think I’ll do ok if I get plenty of practice this year.
love this! 50mm is great lens
Thanks for your comment andrbov – glad you enjoyed my photo(s).
This series turned out really well! I’m glad you were able to get out and that the heat wave is coming to an end.
Our temperatures get well into the 90sF in the summer and even over 100F, but I live in a desert climate so it’s a dry heat, which is not as bad as having high humidity along with the high heat.
I am sooooo glad the heat wave is over too, Fergiemoto. I think that was the longest & worst heat wave in many years. Melbourne’s quite humid in late Jan early Feb and I’m one of those people who feels physically ill in the humidity & heat.
I had to stay home for most of it and it’s so refreshing to go outdoors with the cool breezes now. As I’ve mentioned on my blog, I hate staying home at the best of times. I think it comes from being mostly housebound outside working hours in the old days. I was so exhausted I had to catch taxis everywhere and even a 15 min walk to work needed many rest stops on the way (for about 14-15 years on and off).
Now I have the energy to go out 3-4 afternoons a week and can’t seem to get enough fresh air and nature. If I ever get housebound & can’t walk, I think it’ll be the Beginning of the End (for me).